Among the 18 districts of Odienné, a secondary town of northern Côte d'Ivoire, the district of "Texas" is known to host the highest concentration of bars called "maquis". When darkness falls this residential neighbourhood turns into a space for entertainment, pleasure and business. This chapter explores this effervescence of the forbidden (haram) in the context of a town in which public life is dominantly framed by Islam. It shows how the evolution of Texas by night reveals the centrality of urban margins for their implicit function of making possible the cohabitation of various lifestyles.
This dissertation examines the civic engagement as well as the online and offline discursive and performative practices of faith among Muslim youth in Burkina Faso. It specifically maps out how members of Association des Élèves et Étudiants Musulmans au Burkina (AEEMB), a Muslim student organization with over 100,000 members, negotiate the meanings of their Islamic faith and participate in debates on issues of national and global interests. Since the emergence of violent radicalism in the French speaking, Sahelian West African region over the past decade, scholars have turned their attention to political Islam with a focus on established branches of Islamic denominations such the Sunni movement, the Ahmadiyya, and the Wahhabi and salafist reformist groups. Most scholars are now widening this scope to include less well-established Muslim groups including youth associations and student militancy. One of the major underlying assumptions in this surge of research on religion in the Sahel is the persistent belief that, somehow, there is a correlation between the region being predominantly Muslim and the rise of non-state armed forces. This study challenges such assumptions and examines the communication practices of Muslim youth with a specific focus on those educated in the secular education system of Burkina Faso. It analyzes the complexity of youth activism and how youth claim their religious and other various social identities online and offline.
Les étudiants burkinabè formés dans les instituts et universités arabo-islamiques du monde musulman de retour au pays sont confrontés à des difficultés d'intégration socioprofessionnelle. Si une grande majorité de ces diplômés est absorbée de manière chaotique par la sphère islamique, une minorité parvient à s'insérer dans les circuits de l'administration depuis les années 1970. Il s'agit ici de présenter les parcours généralement atypiques de ceux qui ont pu franchir les obstacles institutionnels et linguistiques pour se trouver une place dans l'administration. À travers des récits de vie de diplômés arabophones, il apparaît que les possibilités d'intégration dans l'administration sont fonction du capital social et des conjonctures, mais aussi des stratégies individuelles entreprises dans un contexte difficile.
